trace chain. These constitute the financial record of a runaway's
recapture.

From 1834 to 1841 the gross earnings on Retreat ranged between eight and
fifteen thousand dollars, of which from seven to twelve thousand each year
was available for division between the owners. The gross then fell rapidly
to $4000 in 1844, of which more than half was consumed in expenses. It then
rose as rapidly to its maximum of $21,300 in 1847, when more than half of
it again was devoted to current expenses and betterments. Thereafter the
range of the gross was between $8000 and $17,000 except for a single
year of crop failure, 1856, when the 109 bales brought $5750. During the
'fifties the current expenses ranged usually between six and ten thousand
dollars, as compared with about one third as much in the 'thirties. This is
explained partly by the resolution of the owners to improve the fields,
now grown old, and to increase the equipment. For the crop of 1856, for
example, purchases were made of forty tons of Peruvian guano at $56 per
ton, and nineteen tons of Mexican guano at $25 a ton. In the following
years lime, salt and dried blood were included in the fertilizer purchases.
At length Hodgson himself gave over his travels and his ethnological
studies to take personal charge on Retreat. He wrote in June, 1859, to his
friend Senator Hammond, of whom we have seen something in the preceding
chapter, that he had seriously engaged in "high farming," and was spreading
huge quantities of fertilizers. He continued: "My portable steam engine
is the _delicia domini_ and of overseer too. It follows the reapers
beautifully in a field of wheat, 130 acres, and then in the rye fields. In
August it will be backed up to the gin house and emancipate from slavery
eighteen mules and four little nigger drivers."[9]

[Footnote 9: MS. among the Hammond papers in the Library of Congress.]

The factor's books for this plantation continue their records into the war
time. From the crop of 1861 nothing appears to have been sold but a single
bale of cotton, and the year's deficit was $6,721. The proceeds from the
harvests of 1862 were $500 from nineteen bales of cotton, and some $10,000
from fodder, hay, peanuts and corn. The still more diversified market
produce of 1863 comprised also wheat, which was impressed by the
Confederate government, syrup, cowpeas, lard, hams and vinegar. The
proceeds were $17,000 and the expenses about $9000, including the
overseer's w